


Freaks

by Kragle (Lizardon)



Category: Deltarune (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Gender-Neutral Kris (Deltarune), Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-02 12:19:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16786834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizardon/pseuds/Kragle
Summary: There was never a moment in Susie’s life following her discovery that they existed where she did not hate Kris Dreemurr.





	1. Chapter 1

There was never a moment in Susie’s life following her discovery that they existed where she did not hate Kris Dreemurr.

She remembers the unbearable weeks following up to her introduction to them. Their stupid not-yet brother Asriel had been hyping up to anyone who would listen how excited he was to be getting a little sibling for weeks, telling everyone that he was going to play so many games with them and do all sorts of other stupid kid things that even then Susie couldn’t be assed to care about. 

She hated Asriel, too, of course. Everyone loved him. That was reason enough for her to hate him. It certainly had nothing to do with how Ma and Pa forbade her from “talking to that faggy Dreemurr kid”. She just happened to hate him, and also happened to not be allowed to talk to him.

Not like it mattered much. The town was tiny, and Asriel was what his mother would describe as ‘a busybody’, which was nice talk for ‘never ever shut up’. Despite never having a conversation with the kid, she could’ve told you what his dreams for the future were, what his favorite food was, and what he watched on TV the night before. Naturally, this ‘exciting’ new addition to his family made him even more obnoxious in his chatter. Worst of all, the adults of town seemed to actually be interested in his stupid rambling, always asking him questions about the process of adopting a human family member. No matter how much she tried to escape it, Susie was always constantly aware of Asriel Dreemurr and how he would be getting a little sibling soon. It was driving her more than a little crazy, making her angry in ways her idiot baby brain couldn’t articulate whenever she would have to hear “I can’t wait to have a best friend I get to live with!” in that stupid squeaky pre-pubescent goat voice.

That was strike one against Kris, and it was before they even actually did anything. She was so very, very tired about hearing about this human. And hot damn, that was before she properly met them and they gave her justifiable reasons for her hatred.

When she finally got to see them face to face, she hated them even more.

Not for the reasons Ma and Pa hated them, though. She was still just a tiny idiot kid still wearing her ratty striped shirt around. Ma and Pa’s ignorant trailer trash comments about “Dreemurrs taking in a meatsack and parading it around like it’s a monster” flew right over her head. Idiot baby Susie didn’t know what a ‘race traitor’ was, or why it was so terrible to be one. She did know something, though. She knew Kris was just a freak, the same as she was. She knew it wasn’t fair.

She remembered that fateful first day at the playground. 

She had watched Asriel lead the human from the safety of a distant swing set. The other children had abandoned whatever they had been doing to rush up and see the tiny human. When they got too close, he threw his paws out in a protective gesture in front of them and looked behind him to his mother.

“Easy. Kris doesn’t really like being touched.” Susie rolled her eyes.

She squinted at the little squishy thing, no scales or claws or fur. Just a tuft of messy brown hair covering their eyes. They clung to Asriel as if a kindergartner was going to be able to protect them from anything. Stupid kid.

Asriel gently ushered them through the crowd, introducing Kris to all the other kids one by one while their mother looked on. When he was finished, Susie watched the human tug his paw and whisper something in his ear. They pointed.

They were pointing at Susie.

“Oh. That’s Susie. She’s uh...” She couldn’t help but smile watching the little goody two shoes squirm awkwardly trying to think of something nice to say about her. “I bet she’s really nice, Kris. She doesn’t talk much. Kinda like you, haha.” He waved at her. “Hey, Susie! Kris wants to tell you hi!”

That was just about the final straw for her. It was bad enough that this annoying thing had to exist and be constantly talked about, but now it was trying to be pleasant with her? She would not have that.

She stormed over to the pair doing her best ‘Pa when he’s angry’ impersonation. Their mom was staring at her, but she wasn’t scared of Mrs. Dreemurr at that age. As far as dumb baby Susie knew there was nothing to be scared of; she knew Mrs. Dreemurr didn’t even wear a belt or smell like Pa’s nasty drinks, which was as close to ‘harmless’ as her dumbass kid self knew.

“Can’t the dumb meatsack talk for itself?” She looked from Asriel to the human hiding behind him.

Mrs. Dreemur yelled at her, of course, which she promptly ignored. If Pa was going to beat her raw for talking to the Dreemurrs anyway, she figured she might as well get her money’s worth and let this kid know some harsh truths about the world. 

“Ma and Pa say your kind’s nothing but a bunch of monster killers. If your brother wasn’t such a wussy little faggot, he’d be scared of you.” She bravely looked Mrs. Dreemurr in the eye, who was shocked silent by her usage of a Tier Five Swear. She hadn’t known what it meant, but when her parents used it, they were always especially angry, so she figured it must’ve been a badass one. She turned back to the human. “Your fake mommy and daddy, too. And when they get smart and leave you, you won’t have nobody to hide behind no more.”

The response was instantaneous. Kris ducked out from behind Asriel and took off running, obvious tears glistening down their face. Asriel and their mother ran after them.  
Feeling accomplished, she had stomped her way back to the swing set. The other kids looked at her.

“Susie, why’d you have to do that? They just wanted to be your friend.”

“Hey, you don’t really hate humans, do you?”

She started to swing, pumping her legs until they were sore. She didn’t have to explain anything to them. They wouldn’t understand, anyway. Realizing they weren’t going to get an answer out of her, they dispersed. She could hear them call her “jerk” and “freak” and even a brazen Tier One Swear or two as they walked away.

She kicked on the swings alone well past sundown, watching as families came to pick up the other children until she was the last one there. She had spent most of the evening debating whether to apologize or not. Maybe she was starting to feel a little bad about what she did, and if she and Kris were both freaks, then maybe they could be freaks together. Ultimately, she decided against it. Ma and Pa would be furious, and she knew very well freaks didn’t deserve to be forgiven, anyway. 

Thanks to Asriel’s big mouth, she would later find out that Kris had cried all night and been taken out for ice cream to make them feel better, Mr. and Mrs. Dreemurr and Asriel snuggling them and assuring them that they would always love them the whole time.

Susie got beat that night, as predicted, though not for the little event at the playground. She couldn’t even remember what for anymore. It didn’t matter, because child Susie learned pretty quick that ‘because I say so’ is sometimes also a valid reason. She retroactively decided it was Kris’s fault somehow, anyway. Maybe there was some kind of freak lottery and Kris drew the ‘gets a family that loves you’ card while Susie had to walk away empty-handed. 

Maybe she should have listened to Ma and Pa’s rants about meatbags and race traitors closer.

…Nah. Even at the age where she still worshiped the ground her shitbag parents walked on, she knew there were plenty of things they knew jack-squat about. Kris’s humanity had maybe even made her pity them slightly more. When their family turned on them, (And she was sure they would, because that’s just what families do to freaks, she should know!) they wouldn’t even have any way to defend themselves. The Dreemurrs looked like a gentle bunch of monsters, sure, but they were Boss Monsters who had the strongest magic in the world. Kris was just a wimpy idiot human kid. Susie didn’t even want to know what the Boss Monster equivalent to the belt felt like.

It almost made Susie thankful that her parents decided to keep a freak around that was the same species as them, at least. Almost.

Anyway, as the years went on it got harder and harder to pity Kris. Even if Mr. and Mrs. Dreemur’s punishments were a thousand times scarier than her Ma and Pa’s, it didn’t change how well Kris was treated by everyone else in town. It didn’t make any sense to her, and it made her hate them more and more.

Kris was even more like her than she initially thought. They did all sorts of things she knew only freaks did, like stare off into space for hours at a time or keep dead silent when being spoken to. They would look at the scars on their on their arms with the same look Susie stared at herself with sometimes, and Asriel would catch them and hug them and start saying things about how “Those bad times are over, you’re safe now.” Stupid goat. Nowhere was safe for freaks.

Except Asriel was infuriatingly always right, at least when it came to Kris. Susie would steal pizza crusts from the trash and be called smelly and weird, then go home and get beat for eating garbage. Kris and their brother would be invited in the diner for free cups of hot cocoa when they ‘looked down’. She knew why Berdly didn’t understand about ‘falling down the stairs’ in a one-room trailer home. She knew why Chilldrake’s parents came to all his piano recitals while Ma forgot to buy groceries or make dinner for weeks at a time. But Kris? Kris was a freak, just like her. That they could be told they were safe, and worse, that it was true stung like the worst betrayal Susie had even known.

She hated Kris Dreemurr.


	2. Still freaks, at least it's plural now.

It felt weird having a friend, especially when that friendship was built on the ashes of what was once a lifelong quiet but seething hatred. 

Susie still didn’t trust Kris, not fully. She wouldn’t let herself fall into the trap of trusting anyone. She knew damn well that it was only a matter of time before they saw her for what she really was and did to her what so many others had. Hell, that fear being realized was what had made her hate them in the first place.

Still, she wasn’t going to act like it wasn’t nice to have someone on her side, even if it wasn’t going to last. Temporary as they were, these quiet times at the lake where it was just Kris and her were all she was living for anymore.

“I miss Lancer, Kris.” She flicked her spent cigarette butt in the dirt. Her stomach growled. Ma's stolen smokes weren't a good enough replacement for dinner, it turned out.

Kris sighed, obviously annoyed by her littering but not enough to say anything to her about it. Nerd. “Yeah. And Ralsei?”

She laughed and lit another one. Maybe she just hadn't smoked enough of them to take the edge off her hunger?

“Sometimes, heh. Not so much when he reminds me of your brother.” She found Ralsei infinitely more tolerable than Asriel, but admitting that she wanted to pet her fluffy boy just as much as Kris did would lose her way too much street cred. Besides, she wasn’t worried about Ralsei. He was safe. Normal.

They looked out on the lake in silence. Sometimes it was pretty hard to tell what Kris was thinking about. They still didn't talk much. Usually, that silence was comforting to Susie, despite any previous comments about how quiet people pissed her off. Kris didn’t feel the need to talk for talking’s sake, which she usually appreciated.

Right now, though, her brain was a prison. She would’ve given anything for Kris to suddenly become as chatty as their annoying older brother. Anything but the silence that gave her time to mull over her fears.

Try as she might she still couldn’t stop thinking about Lancer, how they left him alone in the Dark World, how it’d been weeks and they had never been able to go back. All the muscles in her body were tense like bowstrings, a useless fight-or-flight reflex when the perceived danger was so far away from where she could punch it. Even a long drag of her cigarette didn’t make her arms stop shaking.

She had to break the silence.

“You think that weirdo with the worm collection is taking care of him? What was that dude’s name, again? All I remember is that it looked like a losing Scrabble hand.”

Kris snorted. “Roulx Kaard.”

“Yeah, him. Lancer used to just call him 'Lesser Dad’ all the time. He loved that worm weirdo to pieces. Wouldn’t shut up about him.”

“At least you know he's in good hands.”

Man, Kris was her best friend in the world and all, but they still had the unique ability to piss her the fuck off with just a couple words.

“Loved his other dad to pieces, too.” She realized she had her hands in the air balled into fists and that Kris had flinched. Guilt strangled her, making her stuff those balled hands in her pockets. “Kids can be shitty judges of character.”

Another silence heavy enough that it made Susie shake. Kris at least looked as bothered by this one as she was, their knuckles rapping on the metal bench they were sitting on. The rapid clanking sounds were like the angry heartbeat of a machine.

“Lancer is safe, Susie.” Their voice was so unnaturally calm and even, like they were trying to talk her off of a building or something. That fucking voice, just like their stupid brother. Patronizing. She couldn't stand being talked down to.

She saw red.

She had them up in the air slammed against a tree before she was even aware of what she was doing.

“How the fuck can you know that? Newsflash, asshole, his dad was willing to throw him off a goddamn building!” 

Kris went ragdoll limp in her strangling hands. Guilt stabbed through her. Her iron grip on their sweater loosened and they fell on the grass with a thud.

She turned away from them and shoved the rest of Ma’s cigarette pack into her mouth one by one. They tasted like tobacco-flavored chalk, which is to say, horribly disgusting. It made her eyes water. That’s why she had started crying then, she decided.

“He's not safe. Nowhere is safe for him, Kris. He’s like us.” She was coming apart at the seams, crying like she only ever used to cry alone. Those cigarettes must have been the worst tasting thing ever to make her shake like that.

She felt Kris tap her elbow, but there was no way in hell she was turning around to face them looking as soggy and pathetic as she did.

“Us. Freaks.” Kris still remembered her favorite insult to throw at them. Their voice didn’t sound like Asriel’s anymore. It was empty, quiet, the voice of a scared kid in a world that hated them. That was how she knew they weren’t like him, that they understood. It didn’t matter that they had a family that loved them now, or that they believed what their idiot brother told them about the good in the world. Freaks don’t get to stop being freaks because of any of that. It’s a lifetime membership.

A lifetime membership she never wanted Lancer to be a part of.

“Don’t call Lancer a freak.” There was no bite to her rage anymore. She couldn’t work up the energy to be properly angry with how hungry she was. Even eating the cigarettes was still not a good enough replacement for dinner. 

And it wasn’t like that hadn’t been what she was implying herself, anyway. 

“Lancer's not a freak. Not yet. He still has a chance to be normal.” She thought about him tucking his bike in for bed and laughed harshly. “Or Lancer-normal, at least. He’s still innocent. He’s still good, Kris. And I’ll personally beat the shit out of anybody who’d try and take that away from him.”

Or she would beat the shit out of them, anyway, if she hadn’t been permanently separated from him. She slumped back down on the bench, claws digging through her messy hair with nothing to punch and no more cigarettes to smoke. She heard the creaking of Kris sitting next to her.

“He’s good. We aren't?”

She shrugged. “That’s what makes us freaks, Kris. There’s only one way this ends. One day it’s gonna be us giving our kids the belt and threatening to throw them off buildings. All we can do is hurt assholes who we think deserve it until one day we’re just like ‘em. Fight for our place in this world that hates us, until we’re just as full of hate. For freaks like us, it’s kill or be killed.”

Kris was deathly silent. The creeping suspicion that she’d said something she really shouldn’t have knocked the air out of Susie’s chest.

"Or uh, maybe not so much for you. Ralsei and your brother did a pretty good job of brainwashing you on all that niceness bullshit.” Maybe Kris was nothing like her, after all. Maybe there was only one freak in the world. 

Kris took their sweet time breaking another long bout of silence.

“Being a freak means something different to me.” Kris looked at her. She caught a rare peek at their usually hidden eyes. Red. Creepy. “Mostly, I feel empty. Not like everybody else. Like I’ve been hollowed out so anyone can do with me what they want. I’m just a puppet, or a vessel. If it wasn’t for Azzy…” They visibly winced, throwing their hands over their mouth and contorting unnaturally. Then, they froze and slumped down limply. They were quiet and as still as death.  
"Azzy's going to school to be a social worker." They wrung their hands like they were confessing some grievous sin, instead of sharing something literally everyone in town knew. Of course he was, he was Asriel Dreemurr Who Could Do No Wrong. What job title was better for a perfect little fucking ray of sunshine than 'Savior Of Those Poor, Pitiable Freaks'?

Just thinking about that punk made her want to graffiti some dumpsters.

"Trying to get himself a Nobel Prize in ass kissing, huh?"

They looked very uncomfortable.

"When we were little, he used to tell me he wanted to kill my real parents for what they did to me." Her smugness evaporated. Surely that couldn’t be right. Asriel didn’t have the spine to hate anyone, let alone enough anger to want someone dead. “I don’t know what I feel about my birth family, but Azzy does. I don’t know what I feel about anything, but Azzy does. Freaks aren’t anything.”

She thought hard about the way Asriel and Kris were completely and infuriatingly inseparable growing up. How when Asriel left for college, Kris retreated back into themselves, always looking so lost without their older brother. The puzzle pieces clicked into place, and the mystery that was Kris Dreemur suddenly made a lot more sense to Susie.

“You’re not worried about Lancer.” 

They shook their head.

“He has Ralsei with him.” 

The sun was setting. Kris would have to go home soon, lest their mother think she and them were engaging in activities somehow even less parentally approved than ‘underage cigarette eating’. By now her Ma and Pa would be too drunk to bother her, and if they did, too drunk to win a fight.

She stood up. They followed.

“I still miss the shit out of him, Kris.”

They nodded. “And Ralsei.”

She laughed. “Yeah, and Ralsei.”

They’d try again to get back into the Dark World tomorrow, like they did every day. And, like every day, when nothing but a dingy supply closet greeted them they’d trudge through life as the two freaks with no purpose.

She still didn’t trust Kris, not fully. But it got easier to trust them every day. Having a friend didn’t make her parent’s beatings or the pangs of hunger sting any less, didn’t make the disappointment of finding an empty closet where a world that treated her as a hero should be any less disappointing. But it did give her one tiny sliver of hope.

Somewhere between dull passiveness and angry lashing back, there had to be a middle ground. Somewhere, there was a place for freaks like her and Kris to survive.

Someone was with her in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did somebody say "Vaguely thematically connected follow up chapter with no plot whatsoever?" because if not O O P S.

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my TEDtalk, "Susie is Good, and I Love Her".


End file.
